I found the Julie/Julia project online. I was very impressed that it was actually real!! Who knew? I am reading it in my, put toothpicks between my eyelids half hour of 9:30-10pm. This is after my husband has gone to bed and while I wait until it is time to feed the baby and before I collapse in bed completely and utterly exhausted from the day. I have realised, not recently mind, that living here is hard. It is harder then living in Australia. My husband puts it like this, “ Sitting here is like walking in Australia.” That is how hard it is. Everything, and I am not exaggerating, takes twice the effort.

So tonight it is fish, well I only have two meats in the freezer, chicken or fish and last night we had vegetarian so I had better cook some sort of meat or else my meat loving husband will not be happy.

Lemony Fish Cakes p. 50 from this months Donna Hay Mag. I have never made fish cakes before and have always been rather afraid of them but fascinated at the same time. I am afraid that they will flop. I haven’t had too good a record of pattie type things that one shallow fries. Mine always seem to just fall to pieces and I end up having little bits of chard stuff floating all over the fry pan. So we’ll see how it goes.

This recipe requires: mashed potato, a bit of a problem because I don’t actually have potatoes at present but I do have sweet potato, so I reckon that should do the trick, flaked salmon or trout, Hmmm well I have barramundi and nothing else so I just have to use what I have. Lemon rind, got those in spades, one egg, good cause I only have one egg in the fridge, more had better show up on the plane this avo, and last but not least the good old pinch of salt and a bit of pepper, not a worry (hopefully water soaked salt will do cause that is what I have got).

I hope to serve it with a salad, if my vegies show up today, if not. I’m not sure what I’ll serve it with. I think I have a zucchini, a capsicum and some cucumbers in the fridge, I’ll figure something out.

Well it turns out that substituting sweet potato for potato in the lemony fish cakes was not such a brilliant plan after all. The sweet potato here tends to go dry when boiled up for some reason, so I should have probably added a little milk. The rest of the process when fine and they looked delicious and tasted yummy as well if a little dry. The barramundi worked well, though I think trout or salmon would have had a stronger taste so it is a good thing I served it with honey mustard mayonnaise and not just straight mayonnaise.

So I did serve it with salad and it was just fine and dandy. My vegies did show up, hence the half sweet potato/ half potato mix. And guess what!! The eggs showed as well, which was a good thing as I got out too much fish, had to double the recipe and so needed another egg.

All in all though I think it was a successful dinner. So yay for Donna Hay and yay for my lemony fish cakes not turning into mushy burnt bits in the shallow frying process.